Mixing Nightmare

B

baker_

yeah, newbie works fine.
I was wondering what any of you would do in this situation.
A band asks you to record a live session.
You agree.
You check out the area they rehearse at and it's a recording nightmare: a Storage Unit.
Concrete walls, concrete floors, aluminum doors....
Reverberation and standing waves...mmmm
They offered a good sum of money so you go ahead with the recording.


That's enough background info.

Now comes the mixing. Guitars are present in your overheads. Cymbals are present on every track...and with standing waves, you have these sounds hitting the mics at different times...it's a vague description of the many problems, but i hope you get the idea of the nightmare.


How would you attack these problems?
The whole project was rushed, and with a little planning, I'm sure i could have eliminated a lot of the problems, but they wanted it done their way, and that way was to rush through it...
 
I'd just tell them that the space didn't allow for a good sound to be captured. If you have the time, offer a recording at half the price at a better location, maybe? Or better yet, just convince them it's not your fault, mix it the best you can, and let them know if they want to try again you'll need to try it somewhere else.
 
It would be hard to repair, I imagine...

Maybe you could inform the band of the situation and then ask them if its okay to start a mix contest thread here... Hopefully we could collectively resolve some issues....

Hmm...
 
baker_ said:
They offered a good sum of money so you go ahead with the recording.
Click to expand...
I'd give them the choice of scrapping the project and giving them their money back, or re-recording in a proper location for no extra charge.

And I'd learn to never accept unwinnable terms again, *especially* for a lot of money. It's one thing to agree to a suicide mission for free, because thee are no expectations. But the higher the pay, the higher the client's expectations. And to have any expectations whatsoever from a recording made in a concrete and corregated metal box are pure fantasy.

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
I'd give them the choice of scrapping the project and giving them their money back, or re-recording in a proper location for no extra charge.
Click to expand...
I agreee, you could sink days into trying to rescue it and they won't be happy. Better to write-off the time you've invested so far like Glen suggests - at least you've got a rough demo so you can familiarize yourself with their material.

You could do a really quick mix with no fixes and let them have a listen - you never know, they might accept that - just as long as they promise not to associate your good name with it. :)
 
I think first you have to decide what YOU want to do at this point. Are you up for a challenge, or do you just want to call a duck a duck, and wash your hands of it. If the tracks are so bad that you know there is no chance of making anything usable out of them, then it may be in everyones best interest to either drop the whole thing, or re-record in a usable space.
If you think there's a chance that, given enough massaging, a "usable" mix may come out of it, then you have to decide if the time your going to put into trying, with the possibility that it may never reach good enough, is worth it to you. In any case, make sure the band knows right away that the tracks are, as you expected, problematic at best, and that your recommendation is to re-record somewhere else.
The money thing is a tough one. It's not fair for you to do work and not get paid for it, and not fair for them to pay for nothing if you scrap the project. If you gave them fair warning that the space would not yield a good recording, then I would think half the money is owed you if they decide to scrap it based on the bad recording. If they want you to mix it anyway, they are again deciding to spend the money anyway, and you can decide whether to take it and do your best, or decline.
If I hire a well digger, and he tells me there's really little chance that he's gonna hit water in that location, and I say dig anyway.............
 
Well, if they wanted the sound of them playing in a shed, they got it!

I'd talk to them about it a bit, then either go for a trashy lo-fi sound, or retrack. If you didn't tell them it was a tough room, then you should do it again, no extra charge.

I record in garages and the like all the time. You can get good results, it's just a matter of doing things in a certain way.

This song isn't perfect, but it was recorded and mixed (along with 2 others) in 4 hours, in a garage:

Rock!
 
i made sure to inform that recording there would be a hassle mixing. They wanted to do it anyway. They wanted a live vibe in the recordings. They got that...

johnsuitcase - sounds good. did you track them in the garage or do everything at once? unfortunately i had to do everything live..

Surprisingly, they are happy with the mixes I've done (though very amatuer sounding)
My biggest problem is bringing out the toms. I was limited to recording 10 tracks.

1. Kick
2. Snare
3. Floor tom (i regret that decision...long story behind it)
4. LOH
5. ROH
6. Bass
7. Guitar 1
8. Guitar 2
9. Vox
10. Vox


The main problem i am having is bringing out the higher toms. I can't have the overheads too loud because of leakage from the guitars and basses. I had started pulling out all of the hits i could see/hear in the overhead tracks, and copying them to new tracks. This seemed to be working well. It gave the drums a much fuller and focused sound in the mix.

These guys are talented though. I feel like we could do some reallynice work in the future. I am not a fan of hardcore screamo, but their music has swayed my opinions a bit. They have some great guitar melodies in the more serene/calm movements of their peices.
 
Yeah, I did that in the garage, but we tracked the drums first, to avoid some of the problems with bleed (though I did have one guitar going, just for reference.)

I think editing a doubled overhead is probably your best bet for getting some toms happening. I've had that problem when I had to forego tom mics (live usually), but I would just compress to OHs a bit and try to find the resonant center of the toms, and boost those freqs.

Good luck!
 
first off, glen speaks truth. offer them their money back or some of it or something--high pay does indeed set high expectations. the last thing you want is to make them fell they got ripped off.

now then, sonically, i've been here. the first thing you should've done (and do this next time!!) in the room was hang some comforters, tapestries, bookcases, anything, to break up (diffuse) the sound and knock down those early reflections. we're talking pretty ghetto here--just do something to kill that hollow ringy resonance the room's got.

unfortunately, you're stuck with the room. this is how you deal with it. in a nice sounding room, you'd usually want to emphasize the room--here we want to do the opposite. i assume you recorded to computer.

start with the drums. zoom in on those drum wav files and line them all up--use the snare as your reference. you'll also notice that the peaks on some go up first and on some go down first. reverse the polarity (aka: phase) on tracks as needed so that they all point in the same direction. typically i reverse the polarity on the overhead mics so that it matches the kick and snare. others do the opposite. this will tighten up the drums--maybe too much. you might need to slide the individual hits forward or backwards to maintain feel.

line the bass up with the drums, flip polarity and use whichever sounds best. do the same thing with the guitars. then do the same with the vocals.

between judicious aligning and use of polarity reversal, you can go a long ways towards minimizing the room. it takes some practice, though, and be sure to save often.

other things that may help.

roll off the lows (100Hz on down) on anything that doesn't need them (guitars, vox, etc). roll off the highs on anything that doesn't need them.

you may find noise gates on the guitars, vox, kick and snare to help. they take some dialing in, though.

be careful with compression b/c it can add a nasty sssssssssss (which is the worst of the room) if you're not careful.

oh, and your problem with the toms.......double your OH's and edit them (or automate them) so that they only play when the toms come in. you might want to radically eq them to emphasize the tom frequencies and deemphasize the cymbals and kick. likewise, a snare mic might have good tom information (leakage) in it and may be of some use.


cheers,
wade
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
I'd give them the choice of scrapping the project and giving them their money back,
G.
Click to expand...

Why give them their money back?

baker_ said:
I'm sure i could have eliminated a lot of the problems, but they wanted it done their way, and that way was to rush through it...
Click to expand...

Tell them that the next time they record, let the engineer do the capturing of audio, that way they can focus on playing music.
 
ez_willis said:
Why give them their money back?
Click to expand...
If I have done nothing, I have earned nothing.

Just to be clear, I was advocating dropping the current project immediately without doing any more work. Frankly, baker made a huge mistake accepting the job to begin with. He should have known better than to record inside a barrel. The fact that he didn't indicates bad judgement induced by inexperinece, which is something that I personally would not feel comfortable charging for, and instead and chalk the job up to experience - unless the band was willing to go with option #2.

Now, it turns out in this case that baker lucked out because his client was even more inexperienced than he, apparenly has a set of ears that couldn't hear it's way out of a paper bag, and has no idea what to expect for their money. But that was information that came up later, and at the time I made my recommendation, there was no way to know that for sure.

G.
 
i think you have to re track it.

this time around, why don't you try recording each instrument at a separate time??

just bounce down that scratch track to a stereo track that you can have each musician play along with , minus their part.

you cant get guitar bleed in the overheads if they are playing at different times ;)
 
otherwise, if they are real jerkoffs who nobody likes anyway, jsut eq and compress the shit out of it, make it really loud and hand them their final CD. stupid musicians= stupid listeners too.

just don't get a rep, so if they are a popular band, i wouldnt do that. you don't want to kill your local business.
 
obviously i opted for tracking this session instead...
they wanted to do it live and they paid me. i told them it would not sound that great and they seemed to not care. I guess i am fortunate that the little rich kids dont care too much about quality :p

but once again, they are happy with their mixes which is surprising to me. I did underpromise a little bit...only so i could hopefully deliver more than they were expecting. I guess it worked. We're having a listening session tonight. hopefullly everything goes well. Thanks all for your help/suggestions/support, lol
 
baker_ said:
. I guess i am fortunate that the little rich kids dont care too much about quality :p

,
Click to expand...

You don´t have any "quality", and I can say without hear the recording.
 
baker_ said:
but once again, they are happy with their mixes
Click to expand...

In the end, that's what matters. What you or I consider 'quality' is in the end, irrelevant. It's the artist's record, and if to them the live feel trumps studio sound, then that's their call.

You and I can sit around discussing this and that, but it's their record. If you hate it, tell them you'd rather not have your name on it.

There are lo-fi aesthetics, there are garage aesthetics, and there are pop/mainstream aesthetics. It's not our job to impose our aesthetic, it's our job to help the band capture thier vision on CD (or mp3, vinyl, whatever.) If you did that, then you succeeded with the highest possible 'quality'!
 
I don't get some of you on this. There was full disclosure, the client wanted to proceed anyway, the AE seems reasonably happy, the client is happy......... what's the problem? The only downside I can see here is if the client goes around "advertising" the resultant less than stellar quality product, inadvertantly harming Baker's reputation. That can be addressed, if he feels it necessary, by asking the client to disassociate him from the recording. On the other hand, if it came out reasonably good, then it may be a feather in his cap that he was able to make a decent mix out of such a poor tracking situation. If doing remote work is something he wants to pursue, then this victory over adversity is a step in the right direction, and may be a good example of how good he is at working rooms with questionable acoustics.

Glen - I understand and admire your professional ethics. To you, you have done nothing unless you produce a professional product. Therefore, you wouldn't take a job where that was unlikely to be achieved. That's fine, but some people like hamburgers, and if every cook in town insisted they are above cooking hamburger, I wouldn't have enjoyed the blue cheese burger I just had tonight. ;)

Baker - Congrats on pulling it off. It might be said that anyone can make a good recording in a million dollar room, but it takes real talent to make a good recording in a bad room. I'm sure this recording falls short of many forum member's idea of good, but at the end of the day if you feel good about what you accomplished despite the obstacles, and the client is happy, then sleep well with the money in you pocket.
 
baker_ said:
How would you attack these problems?
The whole project was rushed, and with a little planning, I'm sure i could have eliminated a lot of the problems, but they wanted it done their way, and that way was to rush through it...
Click to expand...


I think Glen had it closest to what I would allow professionally. Part of establishing a future in more successful recordings really has to do with being smart with who you work with and setting standards for yourself.

It's unessessary stress.

However, if the pay was good, I would re-word my role. I'm not an engineer at that point, I'm just "some dude with some gear". Thats just the way it is sometimes. Even great engineers make shitty freelance calls.

If they decide to drop the cash in the future for high end production, then make sure they know who and what you are. *Hint* bussiness card *Hint*



--------------

There's a saying in this industry, "For every good project you put out, your client will tell at least 1 person. For every piece of shit project you put out, your client will tell at least 10 people."

Word of mouth is an animal.

There's also a very basic formula to helping you decide whether you should take a project at all and how much of a priority it is.

The three elements are: Good, Fast & Cheap. or otherwise known as quality, time and cost

The rule is, you can only have two of those at any given time. So if they want something fast and cheap, they have to understand that quality is gonna suffer.

If they want something good and fast, they understand that it aint gonna be cheap. And so on and so forth.

So if you want more gigs like that in the future, don't accept deals that will hurt your reputation and more importantly...your sanity.

But only you can determine that for yourself. :D
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top